What are the effects of a restrictive diet?

While many studies seem to favor a low calorie diet by saying that this is how we keep fit and healthy, and at the same time experts say that the diet in recent years has become more caloric than ever, there is no scientific evidence for one thing. nor for the other.

Studies on low-calorie diets have always been done with short observation periods, in which a maximum of a couple of years after the dietary intervention is reached. And on the other hand, it is not possible to establish the exact daily calories of what our ancestors ate.

I know, it seems absurd to you. Let me explain.

A rough estimate was made based on calculations, but looking at direct sources, once upon a time we ate more.

It is true, of course, that the quality of food has worsened, just as our sedentary lifestyle has increased . But putting people on a restrictive diet only damaged an already dramatic picture of its own. And so far it hasn’t solved the situation.

A restrictive diet doesn’t work, this important study states .

I am not saying to overdo it and eat a lot, but it is one thing to moderate, one thing is to live on eating 1500 calories or 1400 calories forever.

Studies on food deprivation and its effects, such as the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment , conducted among others by Ancel Keys, famous for originating the Mediterranean diet, have given dramatic results on the health of the people involved. In the Minnesota Experiment, Keys estimated that the men involved ate a diet of over three thousand calories prior to the experiment.

After the Second World War, food rationing in occupied Germany had to include 2600 calories per day, which was the average of calories consumed in Belgium (for the Germans it was not so). So in Belgium in the 1950s and immediately after the war, people consumed 2600 calories.

Books on the English Victorian period estimate per capita consumption of around 3,000 calories per day.
So let’s say that in 1800 people ate more than us, at least looking at the history books.
Today, a woman should consume 2000 calories. A man about 2500.
A study of the adult population from the 1980s determined that people ate as much as we did but were thinner than we are.

RESTRICTIVE DIET: THE EFFECTS ON WEIGHT AND HEALTH

• As many of us suspect, by the time we put ourselves on a restrictive diet, we lose weight at first, until the metabolism adjusts and gradually slows down, creating a weight stall.
  The body thus tries to survive the deprivation of food. The symptoms that the volunteers of the Keys experiment reported together with the slowed metabolism were curious: weakness, negative and defeatist thoughts, tendency to feel cold, digestive problems, zero sexual desire, growing interest in food, cooking, preparation some dishes.
  And, of course, growing hunger. 

  What happened when Keys’ men went back to eat?

• An initial increase in abdominal fat in the first few months.
• The volunteers gained weight quickly, but compared to before the experiment, they regained not lean mass but fat. In particular they put on stomachs.
• The situation tended to normalize, due to weight, after eight months of normal diet (ie they no longer gained weight).
  And after 12 months of a normal diet they began to lose the abdominal fat they had accumulated, which is how long it takes for a metabolism ruined by restrictive diets to return to the way it was before the experiment.
  If Keys’ experiment seems too old to you (it is from the 1940s), alas, you have to change your mind. 

  It is recent a study by the University of Ohio that established an increase in the belly fat of mice after making them lose weight on a strict low-calorie diet. When the mice resumed eating normally (not too much, exactly as before), they accumulated fat.

  Are you sure you want to go on a restrictive diet to lose weight?